This is Love
by Secretly a Duck
Summary: Anna likes to believe that they're made for each other. Kristoff does not, or so he thinks. Hesitant decisions, unforgettable memories, scattered hearts... well, nobody said love would be easy. Kristanna!Modern AU/One-shot


**hey everybody! i said it like a hundred times before, drama isn't my forte. but here i am, trying to get my hands on it haha. this fic is 6k words, and it took me forever to finish it. i hope it doesn't bore the wits outta you guys, but yeah. i should probably go back to writing fluff, huh?**

**still, enjoy!**

* * *

><p>Kristoff absently exhaled a shaky breath and watched the puff of his exhalation dissolve into the cold night air. Back against an old building wall, hands tucked in his pockets, and a reindeer headband crammed in the back pocket of his jeans were proof that he's had a rough night.<p>

Parties weren't exactly his forte, especially Halloween parties, mostly for the reason that he's never felt safe in the middle of a bustling crowd and getting shoved or bumped on either side of his shoulders, seeing people dressed from one wacko clothing to another that made him feel more than alienated that all his costume was an effortless reindeer horn strapped together, and the stale taste of beer hanging in the air made his stomach churn with the unfamiliarity of it all.

But of course, there's Anna. In her green, flimsy Disney princess dress she twirled around in when he drove by her house to pick her up. She made the night less morbid for him, how she'd nudge him playfully every once in a while when his mind would be drifting off to some far off place, how she would teasingly mock him like a child as she tells him to open his mouth and she'd suddenly shove a sliced sausage the party had been passing around into his mouth. And finally, she would steal him pecks on the cheek when he'd shy away from people, making him want nothing more than to spend the whole party with just her.

But it's different for her, of course. She had friends, unlike him. He does too, but lesser than her clique. Other than her sister, Elsa that she considered as her best friend in the world, she had Rapunzel, her crafty cousin that hosted the Halloween party, Merida, a known jock at school, Astrid, the captain of the karate club, Tooth, the girl he knows who works as extra help for her father's dental clinic downtown and—

Well, she had a lot. He couldn't even count all of them with his stubby fingers. But he could count his easily. Sven, truly a man's best friend and Hiccup, someone he actually considers sharing distant chuckles and discussions about animal care because he also has a pet named Toothless, but Toothless was a cat, and he's okay with it. He finds that there isn't much difference with the two species.

Kristoff looks over the distance, the lamp burning out across him. He sees Anna finally emerge from Rapunzel's house with Merida behind her, the three sharing a few more laughs and hugs before finally turning her heel and the door shuts behind her. Merida stays away from them from a safe distance.

He smiles as she trudges across the road in her too high heels.

"Hi," she said as she stands on her tippy toes, stealing him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Hey," he smiled back and catches her lips this time, suddenly turning his head slightly to kiss her square on the lips and in a beat, she's blushing mad and steps the flat of her foot back to the ground, head light all of a sudden.

"Um," she starts, and he could see the crimson of her cheeks even in the dead of the night. "Merida told me she was willing to drive me home, she wanted to show me something really rad back at their house and since we're just a few blocks away from each other I said it was cool and I was wondering if it's okay with you if you…"

"Drive home alone?" he chuckles at her innocence, and doesn't feel offended at all. His girlfriend is asking for permission if she could drive off with her friend instead of him in his barely stable truck, and he's okay with it because she asks him in the most adorable way possible. "Of course, feisty-pants. No big, I'm used to it."

His sentiment is rewarded with a smile and she leans in for another kiss. "You're the best, thank you."

"No problem," he says, words barely ghosting over hers. Her voice is hot on his lips and he can't stop, not now that she's so close and begins to lock their lips together as he slips an arm around her waists and she too begins to sling her arms over his neck, holding him close.

She tastes like chocolate and strawberry and smells like lavender like there are flowers on her hair but he knows that's just her, because she's Anna. And no matter how many times he's had her like this he couldn't stop. And after a deep kiss with barely moments of pulling away, he peppers her cheek with wet osculation as if it was like the last time he would ever see her again.

She pulls away, breathless.

"Bye," he said.

_Love's a silly thing, _they tell to themselves.

* * *

><p>"Hey," Kristoff laughed, back against the park bench as he watched his girlfriend give the pigeons a stern look, face twisted in grimace as if she's concentrating really hard. He seizes her hands in her lap in his. "What's wrong? Cut that out, your cute look could kill, you know that?"<p>

Anna's squinted eyes suddenly flash bright, head snapping back at him, mouth agape, like she's been snapped out of a trance. The pigeons begin to flock near their bench, the sun crowning her auburn hair with a veil of sunlight and he thinks how beautiful she looks like this. She blushes when she realizes he called her 'cute'.

"Oh, sorry," she shrugged nonchalantly. "I was just wondering… where we'd be in a few years."

His smile drops. "Oh, really?" he tries to hide the pain in his voice, but it's there, a choked up strain in his words. He wants to push the thoughts away, not trying to take the full effect of the blow. "Where do you think we are in a few years?"

"I don't really know," she smiled, a little sad, head lolling to the side. Shoulders tense, smile tight, hand squeezing his and he realizes she's scared. "I was thinking we could live by the beach, so that when we raise our kids we could always visit the beach! Or maybe we could travel around before we settle in in a nice, cozy home. Maybe next to Elsa's—so that we could always have our kids play with hers! Well, that is if she finds a nice man. I hope she does, but if she ever does the dude needs frisking and a tight interview to really know if he loves her or if he just—"

He cuts her off when he leans down to kiss her. He found the most effective way to stop her dead in her incoherent talks a few months ago, and somehow, his lips were the best weapon when it came to silence her on her nonchalant blabbering that can go on and on for who knows how long. Caught in surprise, she slowly returns his feverish kiss, only to pull away when passing peoples dirty looks seemed to hammer into them after a moment.

"Everything'll be fine, Anna," he smiled. _Hopefully_.

* * *

><p>It's funny how fast it all happened. One moment they were messaging proclamations of love like the silly young adults that they were and the next they're fighting over something so simple, so small he doesn't even remember what started their fight.<p>

When he had his fit of shouting and vein popping, he stormed out of her house and drove back home where he's now drowning himself with all the beer he doesn't even know he had stored in the lock of one of his cabinets he's always had for safe keeping, on days like these when everything had turned into complete shit.

He feels horrible, he does. It was painful to watch her like that, her face twisted with hurt and grimace all because of the words he spat he doesn't even know that's formed in his throat and found its way out of his mouth. It was something about how he wasn't good enough for her, and that they're not supposed to even be with each other, and that they couldn't work it out after she's told him she got accepted into a big college in New York and he's left doomed in California, in the local college sport he's been going to for two years just when he thought she did the same and that they could still be together even after her graduation. But it seemed like, always was, they couldn't.

He was the son of a nobody, having only an adopted family that ran an ice business around town, while she was the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Everything that he's not.

He should've seen it sooner, avoided it beforehand, but he didn't. He couldn't. He was an entangled mess in her love, and it seemed like she was too. He's so in love he never thought about it in all the nine months they've been going out with each other. And finally, now that their love is at its peak, he ends it.

Just like that.

And he feels so bad he could feel the burn of his lungs with each exasperated breath he takes, the sting of his eyes that dwell tears for who knows how long now, and the scattered pieces of his heart on the floor, his chest empty throbbing with the scar it's left forever to stay and he wanders if it'll ever heal, or if he'll ever forget her.

He tries to drown himself in cheap beer again and he thinks he'll never be sober and he fails miserably as he tries to forget her.

Little does he know, he's left her all laid in bed with a broken heart, waiting endlessly for him to call her and come around like all the little arguments they've had before.

But this time, he doesn't.

_She was mine_, he thinks, regretfully.

* * *

><p>It's been three weeks.<p>

It's prom night. And it's everything Anna thought it would be. Bright lights, extravagant ornaments, exorbitant dresses and suits people wore, and appetizing food down the tables with her favorite assortment of chocolates she's surprised they served on a classy night like this.

But she never thought she would go with someone she doesn't love.

Hans.

Sure, every teen girl at Arendelle High fancied him, draped over him during breaks, and dreamed of going out with him more than any boy at school.

But she doesn't.

It actually caught her by surprise that the week before prom (she's been sulking all over) he asked her through a text, asking nicely if she wanted to go with him. There was a tiny hope in her heart that it would be Kristoff, hoping, begging, pleading the gods in the heavens that he would stop being such a brute and come waddling back to her.

But he didn't, so she accepted the invitation of this jock instead she couldn't even bring herself to link arms with.

Everyone's stares are piercing, and she could hear some of the mean girls mumbling and rolling eyes at her over the corner of the room, and she couldn't bring herself to care because she's looking for someone in the crowd, someone in the sea of people she's been dying to talk to for so long.

He's distanced himself recently, and he seems more introverted than he already is. And she's miserable without him, without someone to let loose with, without someone to bicker over the simplest things, without someone to cuddle in late nights he'd secretly sneak in and stay over her room and it's not even intimate because he knows she's still isn't ready, it's just the two of them. All curled up with her tucked in the side of his chest and she would complain concerning his body odor and he would growl, and she would laugh it off because he's so cute when he's angry and she loves washing away his anger with the simplest peck on the lips. And they would fall asleep like this, arm in arm with the warmth of their enveloping each other.

And it's been very, very cold without him recently, she grows conscious of.

Finally, her eyes grow weary after her endless search for him in the crowd, and she learns that he didn't come tonight. Sure, why would he barge into the senior's prom when he doesn't even have a date?

Hans emerges from the jostling crowd, and he walks her to the balcony when he offered her to get her some fresh air.

Anna doesn't know how, but the pain resurfaces and when he asks if she's okay, she falls into his arms more dramatically than she intended to and she sobs into his chest until tears couldn't pour out anymore and they stay like this for the longest time since the first time that she concluded that he was a jerk-ass jock but now, he thinks he is nicer like everyone else had kept telling her.

When she finally pulls away after a moment of stillness, just before she could tug her lips into a smile and form a thank you on her small lips, he kisses her.

And the feelings are still there, but not for him. Not for Hans, for Kristoff. But Anna tells herself that it's over, and gives Hans the permission to lock his lips to hers just when she thought that no one else would touch her lips the way Kristoff would.

_He was mine_, she thought, ruefully.

* * *

><p>Kristoff looks at her dumbfounded, taken aback by the fact that she's standing right in front of his shop after all these years.<p>

He dropped out of college after she left, after his parents concluded that they couldn't support him any longer because he's been dropping one subject after another, and that they couldn't help him any longer. He's okay with it, because he got a chance to work under Oaken, towns best tattoo artist. And Flynn the barista at Seventh Street did say he had potential, so why not? He could be the best damn tattoo artist rather than a businessman for all he cared.

And it's been three years since he last saw her. He's 24 now. She's 21.

Three years since he let her go. And there are knots after knots of butterflies tingling in his gut and his palms are getting sweaty and he seems to have forgotten how to breathe, or even, how to talk because he never thought he'd see her again.

She's beautiful. She still is.

Anna's hair was still the same color of dried leaves in Autumn, and her freckles were still peppered on her face and he remembers and maps each one and he remembers how he used to kiss them back then when they were still together. Back when they were silly young adults. Her hips were wider than he had remembered but he certainly doesn't mind, and her eyes are bright as ever and it's an ocean, and he is left to drown in them.

Though her smile is worn, he could tell.

"Hey," she nods at him and stretches her hand out for a shake, more formal than she has ever been.

He fights back a sob and he takes her hands in his trembling ones. "Hey yourself."

He feels a mixture of insecurity now that he's seeing her like this, in a summer dress while he's just rocking a faded rock band shirt and his blonde hair is a mop on his head. And since the day she's left, he's started growing a pretty impressive beard along his jaw just when he thought he didn't have to impress anyone from the day she had left and on, but now he wish he did. To look less barbaric, less desperate, less grieving, more human.

Her hands are cold, and it sends him a pang of memoirs from back then. He's never felt her so cold like this, she was always warm to touch, warm and bubbly, and so warm to kiss that it surprises him that she's changed so much since then. And he realizes in a beat, that, she's in fact just as scared as him. And she's trying so hard to mask whatever leftover feelings she has for him, but he thinks it was false.

"I'd like to get a tattoo," she smiled sheepishly at him, now pulling her hand away and balling it into a fist against her chest protectively. His heart drops. "You're the man for the job, am I right?"

"Yeah, that's me," he said when he finds his voice and he tries to break away from the mild stupor he has spiraled into. "Take a seat," he offers and he begins to gather his tools.

Sure, she's here to get a tattoo. She didn't come for him. She didn't stop by to say hi or to ask if he'd want to go down town and have some coffee for a while. She has someone else. And he thinks back if she's still with Hans, and if she's happy with him, and wonders how she's doing in New York, and wanders how her studies have been in the big art school she's signed up for and he wonders if she's a bona fide happy person and—

"What would you like?" he blurts guiltily, and he wants to act nonchalant about this like all his other customers. But she wasn't just a customer. Or a stranger, or a mere person. She was Anna.

She taps her fingers to her pouted lips and he fights the urge to lean over and kiss her, right here and now but he couldn't. So he sits there with her, and he dies a minute of what seemed like an eternity with the thoughts that she's in front of him finally and she's still breathing, without him, she's breathing. Like in all the nightmares he's had for the past three years without her, she's breathing fine without him. Because he isn't. He couldn't without her.

Finally, she meets his gaze. "A reindeer," she smiles, but it's sad. And he dies again inside. It was his costume for Halloween, the night he had felt naked under her love. And he does not question her decision but forces himself to work.

Anna wanted it on her wrist and Kristoff could see her bite back the pain as he hammers the needle into a masterpiece on her skin, and after it, he wipes it off.

He watches her with a dorky grin when she smiles in awe at his work, a small black silhouette of a reindeer and he likes her like this. Raw and exposed just for him. He had broken down all the walls she guarded her heart the minute she stepped into the shop, and he breaks it down with the simple brush of his fingers and the work of his needle.

Suddenly, her face drops.

"I'm getting married," she choked. His heart plummets and his eyes grow wide as saucers. The world stops for a moment. She doesn't look up to meet his accusing eyes, but only continues to idly press her thumb over his work, rougher and rougher as she did so. Painful, eyebrows furrowed, short nails digging into her wrists. Something she could never scrub off no matter what she did and he thinks that maybe she likes this, maybe she likes to torture the both of them with their past, and maybe she still hasn't let go. Like him.

"I'm getting _married_," she's sobbing now.

And he realizes how stupid he's been and he balls his palms into a fist and he wants to scream but his throat slowly burns and it's getting harder and harder for him to breathe and he realizes that there are tears finding its way to the corner of his eyes.

Now he remembers one of the promises he's made for her back then, how he would propose to her on Summer's night and they would get married in Autumn, make love in Winter and find happily ever after in the green of Spring. But the world is fucked and he hangs his head low and he's crying because he will never actually get to do any of these. She wasn't his anymore.

And he knows he'll never be able to forgive himself.

"I…" she begins and he is back on earth and his head shoots up to see her, eyes flooded with tears. He sees her squeezing the tattoo he made for her so hard that her fingers dig deep into her flesh and she buries it into the heart of her chest. "I wanted something that would remind me of you, always."

She collapses in his chest, crying, and he realizes what ill-fate he has brought them. He throws his arms around her, pressing the palm of his hand to the small of her back and he digs his face into the crook of her neck like all the years that had gone by before. They don't say I love you's because it's always been there.

"I'll always be with you…" he breathes her in and the tears are hot in his eyes. "Forever."

_He was hers._

* * *

><p>She's married now. And she finds herself frozen on the other end of the passenger train, her heart stopping a beat when she realizes it's him all along.<p>

It's Kristoff. In New York. For all she could care about. Two years have passed since they'd last seen each other again.

He's wearing a thick jacket and tattered jeans, a suitcase resting on his lap and he's just as dumbfounded as she is. His chocolate eyes are big and bagged, while his blonde hair is tucked under a beanie, cozy under wool. For once in a long time, he looks nice and clean shavin', but always did look nice—good even with or without a beard, she thought.

Anna's mouth is gaping, eyes sad as their eyes keep locked with one another, neither refusing to look away from the other. And again, her heart is wrapped in a turmoil of emotions and she is in a rollercoaster, and finally, she blinks and lets out a ragged breath she didn't notice she's been holding for so long.

The train jerks into a halt, and she's at her stop. And she sees his foot step on either side of him and he gets up, and she thinks he will come to him and say hi, or hug her, better, but her husband comes in between them.

"Anna, let's go," Hans said and he ushers his wife away from the brute he doesn't even know he's come in between.

Anna dares look back, her body reluctantly following her husband, but her heart is left with him. Kristoff doesn't look away and she doesn't either, not until she's engulfed in the sea of people that slowly dwindled.

She looks back to him one last time with a look that screamed _'I still love you'._

'_I still love you too'_, he screamed back.

But she was gone.

* * *

><p>"Anna," he exhales huskily into her ear, and all the muscles in her body tense to the calling of her name. It's a melody that plays on his lips, and she closes her eyes briefly and imagines him saying her name in a wedding night she'll never get to see, where she was his bride and he was her groom. And she yanks her arm away from his touch when she opens her eyes to poignancy of reality.<p>

"Kristoff," she bit back a smile knowingly, they're not supposed to be out here. In the dark halls of a hotel that fate had set for them to meet up again, and she wants nothing more but to run away while she still can. While her heart is still in her chest. But he corners her, hands fisted on the wall on either side of her head, and she basks in his warmth when he leans in.

"Look at me," his voice is demanding, and she does what she's told.

Even in the dark, he still noticed the black and blue mark just at the corner of her left eye, and her freckles there are dark and discolored, and she's blotched with bruises from her clavicle and he knows it stretches to the cream of her arms. He rips the side of her shirt and she gasps, and he was right. The freckles on her arms are lapped with bruises and he holds her wrists with a bruising force to keep her from covering her now bare shoulder, and the animalistic look he wears is washed when he exposes the truth.

"Kristoff it's not what you think it is it's—" he silences her with his lips. The brush of his lips is tender at first, and slowly, he grows hungrier for her and he begins to wrap his arms around her petite form, she doesn't complain. Slowly, her arms link to his neck and pulls him deeper, rougher, and whatever explanation she had was washed away with the brush of his lips.

"This is wrong," she gasps into his mouth and he attacks her neck, and nips at the sensitive skin there, struggling to break free from his grasps. His eyes are screwed shut and there is nothing more but his calloused hands wandering up and down her petite body, something he should've done in a long time. "I'm married."

"I don't care," he roughly breathes into her skin, and trails wet kisses again up to her lips and she's gone, she's kissing him back.

He grinds their hips together, and he wants nothing more but to wrap himself in all that she is.

They pull away, breathless.

"He's hurting you," he doesn't say it angry after a moment of drowning in each others gaze, like the way he tore the sleeve off her shirt earlier. He says it heavily, like he's about to cry because he knows in all his life he would never do that to her. She deserved so much more, he couldn't bear it. She deserved… him.

She looked away. "My father liked him for business. So did Elsa."

"Do they know about..." One of his hands find its way to the small of her back and he presses his thumb over the discoloring on her once pale skin, some fresh some old. "This?"

She shakes her head no.

Kristoff feels the swell of anger budding in his chest, and he bunches a fist into her shirt. Anna feels him tense against her and she fears that he would march up their hotel room and barge in and just rough Hans up good, but she couldn't let him. Not when he's a businessman that has a reputation to keep clean.

She pulls him into a hug and she buries her face into his neck, one leg still swung on his waist. "No," she croaks, and she pleads him not to. He's lost and he wants to end it for her, but she's asking him not to. In the way she did seven years ago during her cousin's Halloween party, the last event they've ever gone off to together. Or how it was in the park, how everything seemed perfect at that time. "Please. Don't make things worse."

"He doesn't deserve you," he says against her ear, staring into space, refusing to look at her. His heart is heavy in his chest and its been a while since he's felt this, all his emotions haywire and wild and it's impeccable to believe that he's giving into her request.

She pulls away to meet his gaze.

"And _you_ think you deserve _me_?" she asked, almost choking. And he looks down at her this time, and he wonders how many nights she's cried with those big blue forget-me-not eyes of hers, how many nights she's bawled on her bed without waking her husband up, how many moments she wished she could break free.

"No," he finds his voice, swallowing. Suddenly quiet and still. "But I still love you."

A hand clamps her mouth to fight back her whimpers and sobs, and she pulls away from him. She knew she had to stop this, stop him from invading her life. She's married now, but she can never seem to shake their past away. This was her choice, this was his. This was their mess of decisions that brought them here, and she was going to make a stand.

Barely feeling she had knees at all, she shoves his chest away from her before bolting away from him, to save herself, to save him, to save them. The blow leaves a hollow in her chest and her vision grows blurry beneath the fluorescent lights and the dark halls before she finds herself stumbling on one of the restrooms of the hotel.

_Thunk_, went the sink when her hands grasped it roughly, elbows writhing as she tried to pull herself together, but her heart is scattered somewhere back at Rapunzel's party, the park, his tattoo shop, the train, and now—at one of the halls of the hotel, with him.

Slowly crumbling to the marble floor, she cries openly, and this time, not against his chest.

_She was his._

* * *

><p>They find each other's eyes in the crowd again, but this time, she's running away not from him, but from the crowd.<p>

A rough year after losing her to the blackness of the hotel halls, he finds her not exposed in scars and bruises this time, but instead she hides them in a black jacket sporting all the way down to her knees, clearly too big for her, sunglasses hiding her blues in a cloudy day, and a fedora hat as she hangs her head down low.

He gapes at her for a moment, watching as she zooms away from the chattering crowd that seemed to bug her and the people flashing cameras at her face. Wincing at the attention, it takes a full moment for her to realize that it's him, but he's too choked up to run after her with Sven he hauls with a leash sniffing at his feet.

His brown orbs dig into her, her blue ones, hidden behind glasses catches his in a brief second. With the crowd towering over her like hungry zombies for human flesh she barely misses him.

And then, just when he's about to drag his limp arm out to wave for her, someone else already does.

Elsa, in a black Mercedes, waving and looking flustered to grab her sister's attention. Two men in tight black suits he guesses as their bodyguards come rushing for Anna, and before he knew it, she's being hauled by the arm into the car, and she squeaks something at him, a look of shock and sympathy and apology on her face.

Just before the door slams at him in a distance, it's barely audible, but he knew what words she spilled. "—_I'm sorry_—" she said, and before he knew it the car drives away.

Caught in shellshock, he glances up the building where she ran out from.

The court of justice.

* * *

><p>"Hey," he exhaled breathily, barely there, barely accepting that she's in front of him, after all these years. At the park all their promises were broken. He can't seem to look away, too astonished by her. "It's… it's been a while."<p>

"Yeah," she tries to shrug back at him, but it comes out as a forced action, shoulders stiff and trembling. "I haven't seen you since—_then_," she stops herself suddenly, face suddenly flushed with memories.

Anna was just supposed to give Elsa and her nephew a quick visit, and they were supposed to meet here at the park. Glad at first that Kristoff might've packed his bags and left their hometown, like her, she entered her once called home with a bright smile, greeted by the suns heat on her cheeks and the wind in her hair. But now, fate seems to let them cross paths again, by the bench they once said everything would turn out alright—which clearly wasn't. Her heart betrays her, drawn by his still musky scent and charcoal eyes.

Slowly closing her eyes to contemplate, they really haven't changed much since then.

When he speaks up again, it snaps her out of her daze. "I heard that you two have already…"

"Split," she finished for him. His eyes search hers for any kind of pain on the subject, but all he could see was sympathy and calmness, a small smile inching on her lips. "Yeah, we split."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't have to. You were right, he was a jerk."

"He always was. Told you, my conscience never fails does it?"

Her laughter is full this time, and she realizes it's not that funny and she's actually on the verge of tears for some reason. Maybe it's him, maybe it's just her, or maybe it's just the nostalgia of it all. Her face drops, balancing weight on one foot to another and momentarily reminding herself to breathe as she tugs on her skirts, feeling childish wearing a summer dress as a 25 year old. But she is gushed with the sense of youth with him, how he made her feel light, on the verge of vertigo on the edge of linked memories.

"I missed you," she blurts, suddenly unfazed and unafraid. Her face splits a smile, genuine, and it ends her suffering.

He's too choked up but he finds his words. She looks young, still the twin pigtails and high cheekbones, old bruises dry and long forgotten. "I _miss_ you too."

She wanted to laugh at this, but her words come strained and strangled. "How did we end up like this?"

"I think it happened when we fought about my pungent smell and your addiction to chocolate."

She laughed. "I like your pungent scent."

"I like how you eat chocolate," he grins back, stepping forward to tuck a stray bang off her face.

"I love your sarcasm."

"I love your feisty-ness."

"I love your pear-shaped square shaped feet."

"I love your freckles."

"I love _you_," she says, and this stops him momentarily from their little game. It makes him weak in the knees, words he never thought he'd hear again.

He cracks a smile, wretched, but it makes him look boyish and young. The smile he wears when they were young whenever she'd text him first thing in the morning or when he'd steal her quick pecks unexpectedly that would leave her blushing mad like a tomato.

He dares take another step towards her, closing the space between them. "I love you too. Always have."

"Kristoff," she starts, guilt building inside her. "I'm sorry that all this time I was trying to ignore you, get away from you, I just thought he loved me and that I didn't want to make anymore mistakes but I couldn't get away. You were my best friend, you were there for me and I really did love—"

He silences her with a kiss. And they are thrown back a distant seven years ago, on the same place, with the same person, same unwavering feelings. He smiles into the kiss when he gets that she's standing on her tippy toes, small and petite as he saw her alas. He wanted nothing more than to hoist her up, but the drum of his heart and the rush of blood deafens him and he forgets a moment that he has knees at all. And it all feels right in that moment. Her lips on his, his on hers, her hands around his neck, his arms looped along her waist, and the beating of their heart is one.

Pulling away, their arms are caught in all weird obstruct angles and she giggles, a light sound in the air. "You."

"You," he smiles back. They do the little forehead bump read in fanfictions, laughing when they did, and he tells himself he'll propose to her someday, when they're both less broken and he'll mend her heart, he'll pick her up and he won't lose her again. He swore that he never, never will.

_This is love_, they tell themselves.

* * *

><p><strong>how was it? hopefully it wasn't cliche or anything. also... tattoo artist!Kristoff is my new favorite thing, don't you agree? ;3 i think i want to write more for tattoo artist!Kristoff in the future... so stay tuned~<strong>

** feedback is most appreciated, see you on the next fic!**


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